[Indexed as: "Indian Affairs in Texas. – A Telling Expose – Letter From Hon. E. Degener.” Daily Express (San Antonio, Tx.), Apr. 15, 1871]

We append to this a letter from Hon. E. Degener, ex-Congressman, 4th Congressional District, State of Texas, which for strength, point, and fearless expose of the Indian situation, ranks any effort in that direction, yet made to induce a granting of relief.

Facts are treated as such, and the documentary proof accompanies this letter. We fail to see how the Secretary can possibly go around that letter, and refuse to give to our suffering frontier the protection that is therein demanded.

We want every man in Texas to read this latter carefully and thoroughly, and when done with it, we desire that he will hand it to his neighbor for perusal.

The people of the fourth district have every reason to be proud of their champion defender of the frontier, and we feel satisfied, that pride will manifest itself at the next election, by an overwhelming return of ballots, sending him again to National Halls, to represent them.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
March 25th, 1871.

Hon. Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior:

SIR – In pursuance of our conversation this morning in relation to the condition of the Indian frontiers in Texas, I take the liberty of repeating herewith the main points.

From a number of private letters and Texas newspapers, I gather the conviction that the section of country which I had the honor to represent in the Forty-first Congress, was, during the last moon, afflicted with Indian outrages to a larger extent than ever before. It seems certain that several hundred savages must have been spread over the northwestern counties, and all indications, as arms and equipments, show that the perpetrators of the outrages were Reserve Indians, probably Comanches and Kiowas of the Fort Sill Reservation.

As a specimen of the sufferings of the poor frontier people, I annex a letter (A) of one of my constituents, Mr. H. M. Smith, who asks my assistance for the recovery of his two children, who were kidnapped by the Indians in sight of his farm-house. I learn, further, that three grandchildren of Mr. Vogel, and a boy named Heffmeyer, in all six children, were stolen within twenty miles of San Antonio, a city of 15,000 inhabitants. At the same time fourteen Indians were seen as near as three miles from the same city.

I subjoin another letter (B) of Mr. E. Graham, from Fort Worth, giving the details of the killing of five white men, and the atrocious manner in which it was done – especially of an old gentleman whose body was shamefully mutilated, and a dog thrust into his bowels.

I will state that during the same period four colored men were killed, their bowels torn out and filled with corn meal from a wagon the negroes were escorting.

In case these inflictions should not seem sufficient to justify our demand for a better protection, I would most respectfully call your attention to a third letter, xxxxx  of Mr. Ketchum, Collector of Edenburgh, Hildalgo county, giving an account of robberies committed by citizens of the Republic of Mexico.

These letters bear so evidently the stamp of veracity that in my estimation no further evidence is needed to show that my constituents are not justly dealt with by our Government, which is in duty and honor bound to protect the most humble of its citizens.

I have made the humiliating experience in Congress, and even to-day that doubts are entertained as to the extent of outrages, and that belief is current that the aggressions of the whites are the cause of the troubles. In relation to the doubts I would refer you to the records of the War Department and those of our State Governments. In relation to the aggressions, to the geography of the country and the reports of the Indian Department itself.

The white settlements are 150 miles distance from the reservation, and the inducements are the fact that the white people by their industry have acquired property in cattle and horses, and the Indians consider labor a dishonor, stealing and murdering heroic deeds, and successful begging of the United States, the acutest diplomacy.

The policy of our Government evidently confirms the Indians in their belief.

Our humanity is construed as weakness. The treaties are a confirmation of Indian idleness, and the ransoms paid for the captives a premium for the most fiendish of cruelties.

I learn, moreover, that it is the intention of Gerneral Sherman to move the Sixth cavalry from the frontier to the frontier to the interior, for the purpose of protecting the loyal people against the disgraceful outrages of secret bands known as Camelias and KuKlux-Klans.

It cannot be denied that the colored people, who are the principal sufferers, are entitled to as ample a protection as white men are, but it would be difficult to show why white men, living on the frontiers as the pioneers of civilization, and serving as a bulwark against the Indians, should be entitled to less consideration than the largely enfranchised slaves.

Can it be expected that frontiersmen, who see their property stolen, their wives and daughters outraged, their children carried into captivity, and their earnest appeals for protection disregarded, their complaints treated as exaggeration, and taunted to despair by the allegation that the original wrong is all on their own side, will retain a vestige of that heroic love for our Government which signalized my constituents during the darkest days of the rebellion!

It is not idle to suppose that they will bow with Turkish fatalism under the dictates of a Republican  Government which forbids them to defend themselves!

Will they not organize and follow the marauders into the Indian reservations and the heart of the Republic of Mexico, and thus cause the most horrid kind of bloodshed, the expenditure of millions of money, and serious complaints with a foreign Power!

I was this morning honored by the query “What can be done to avoid such a disaster? My reply is simple. Organize the citizens in the counties exposed to Indian marauding as a home guard, place these forces under the control of the War Department, and instruct the officers who have charge of the Indian reservation first, to secure the stolen children, and then hang every Indian who was engaged in capturing them, or is caught with stolen stock, to the highest tree in sight of the Indian village.

If treaty stipulations are in the way of throwing the reservations open to civilized settlements, let the whites he kept out, but let every Indian who crosses his lines be treated at once as what he really is – a thief and an assassin.

It is true a defence plan based on the organization of citizen soldiers was proposed is the Forty-first Congress and defeated. From the subjoined printed documents (D) and (E) it will be gathered that the opponents of the bill entirely misunderstood its bearings.

If his Excellency, the President of the United States, will, in his next message Congress, propose a measure which, without interfering with his peace policy, is calculated to secure life and property on the Indian frontiers, the Administration party in the Forty-second Congress is still strong enough to carry the measure, if even the opposition should try to defeat it, which, in my estimations, will, however, not be the case, as the defence of the frontiers has certainly not a shadow of a political, partisan character.

Brevity of time before my departure from Washington does not permit my entering more fully upon the subject. I deem it, however, sufficient to recall the main points of our conversation to your memory.

Trusting that the Government will show by its action that it has the interests of the frontier people as much at heart as those of the people in the interior and on the Atlantic coast, I have the honor to sign myself your obedient servant,

E. DEGENER.